Perceptual deletion and asymmetric lexical access in second language learners

Area of Science:

• Phonetics and Phonology
• Second Language Acquisition
• Psycholinguistics

Background:

• French native speakers often omit the /h/ sound in English words.
• This production difficulty suggests potential challenges in the perception and processing of English /h/ by L2 learners.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate how French listeners process English words that begin with the /h/ sound.
• To determine if perception and lexical access reflect the observed production patterns.

Main Methods:

• A lexical decision task was employed using English words and nonwords.
• Nonwords were systematically created by manipulating the presence or absence of the initial /h/ sound in real words.

Main Results:

• Participants made more errors (misses) on English /h/-initial words.
• Participants also exhibited more false alarms on nonwords that were derived from vowel-initial words by adding an /h/.

Conclusions:

• The findings indicate that French listeners' processing of English /h/-initial words is impaired.
• These results align with production data and highlight asymmetries in L2 lexical access for phonemes not present in the L1.